Save Money on Laundry with These Super Smart Tips

Laundry. The never ending mountain of laundry. There is always so much laundry, especially if you are a mom. Since we are always doing laundry, wouldn’t it be great if we could save money on laundry?

Also, how many times can I say laundry in three sentences? Judging by the above paragraph, that answer is five.

I just thought you’d want to know that.

Anyways, if you ask me what my two least favorite chores are, I’d say dishes (no dishwasher here, and kids use a LOT of dishes) and laundry. I just can’t figure out how it piles up so fast.

Do you ever see those homes with the laundry room out in the open? You know the ones I’m talking about – the laundry room has an open concept look and is paired with another room in the house.

It’s those laundry rooms you see on Pinterest that are ridiculously cute, and insanely clean? I mean, I look at those pictures and I start to covet a little. I know I shouldn’t, but I do.

But I want to know, how do people do it? How does ANYONE have a laundry room that clean all the time? My laundry room is clean for .5 seconds, and then some kid is putting more clothes down there.

Also, my laundry room is in the dungeon…um…I mean basement of our house. This is an old farmhouse, so our basement is not like a basement you are going to lounge around in and watch tv.

Nope, this is the type of basement you make sure all the lights are on when you go down there and you sing loudly as you enter it – to scare away anything that might be lurking. Frankly, if there are mice I’d rather scare them off with my singing instead of get a glimpse of them running away.

The concrete walls and floor don’t really scream “you are welcome here,” you know what I mean?

Reading this post over I realize it sounds like a 7 year old wrote it. However, if you were in my basement, you’d understand.

I don’t want to sound too negative though. I mean, this basement is a step up from our last house. The basement in our last house was complete with a dirt basement. I’ll take concrete over dirt any day. You have no idea what can tunnel through a dirt basement. Unfortunately, I do.

But I’ll save that story for another day.

Anyways, back to the laundry room. It’s basically impossible to make a farmhouse basement laundry room cute, especially when it shares it’s space with your husbands tools.

So, I’ve decided I’m just not going to worry about that. I will never have a cute laundry room as long as I live in this house. But – I can aim for two things when it comes to laundry. Having it free of dirty laundry for more than 5 seconds (hey, a girl can dream) AND saving money on my laundry expenses.

Since the second one feels more achievable, at least while kids are living here, that’s the one I put my focus on.

SAVE MONEY ON LAUNDRY

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USE A CLOTHESLINE. Okay, I’m sure you knew this one was coming so let’s just get the most common one out of the way. Dryers are energy hogs, no way around it. You can hang your clothes on a clothesline and save a lot. In the colder months we hang our laundry inside. We have two clotheslines set up. While some people are worried that this could cause too much moisture in the air, we hang them in the room our wood stove is in so this isn’t a problem for us.

We actually don’t even have a dryer so hanging our clothes is the only option. This does require us to be a little more prepared. We can’t just wash a shirt we need a few hours before because it has to hang to dry. However, with a little planning you can definitely forego the dryer.

DON’T BE BRAND LOYAL WITH LAUNDRY SOAP. A lot of generic brands of laundry soap work just as well as the name brand laundry soap. Buy the cheaper brands to wash your clothes.

MAKE YOUR OWN LAUNDRY SOAP. While buying generic brands of laundry soap is cheap, making your own laundry soap is the absolute CHEAPEST way to go. I’ve been making my own laundry soap for years. It’s insanely frugal to make your own laundry soap and you can make a huge batch that will last you quite a while. You can find the recipe I shared for laundry soap here.  I store my soap in a pretty jar like this one.  Because if my laundry room can’t look pretty, at least my soap container can.

USE HOMEMADE DRYER BALLS. If you just can’t give up the dryer, consider giving up the dryer sheets and using homemade dryer balls that you can make yourself.

DON’T BUY CLOTHES THAT NEED TO BE DRY CLEANED. Not only can dry cleaning be expensive, it’s also a hassle to bring your clothing to the dry cleaners. Avoid buying any type of clothing that needs to be dry cleaned in the first place.

WASH YOUR CLOTHES IN COLD WATER. Washing your clothes in cold water will help your energy bill. I generally wash our clothes in cold water, though sometimes if it is something that is really dirty or gross I will wash it in hot water. However, most of the time I can get away with just washing them in cold water.

MAKE SURE YOUR WASHING MACHINE IS FULL. Don’t run the washer unless it has a full load of clothes in it. This will prevent wasting electricity. Not only that, but it will prevent you from wasting your time.

CLEAN YOUR LINT TRAY REGULARLY. If you are going to use the dryer, be sure to use your lint tray. Your dryer will work more efficiently. On top of that, lint build-up in a dryer can cause a fire so it’s very wise to be on top of emptying your lint tray.

DO YOUR LAUNDRY DURING CHEAPER TIMES. Some electricity companies now offer different rates of usage for different times of the day. If you are able, do your laundry at the time of the day that you can get the cheapest rate offered to you.

WASH USING A SHORT CYCLE. I always use a shorter cycle to wash our clothes unless it’s something that is really dirty and needs the extra time in the washing machine. For the most part the shorter cycle has always done a great job.

FINDING LITTLE WAYS TO SAVE MONEY ALL OVER YOUR HOME

All the little ways we can save money in our home can add up. While the above ideas may seem small to you, if you do enough little things to save money it all will add up.

If you save money in the kitchen, save money on your vehicle expenses, AND save money in the laundry room, those small savings start to snowball into big savings.

We also saved money on our washer itself by buying it second hand. We literally bought the washer from someone 9 years ago for a fraction of the cost of what we would have paid for one brand new and it’s still going! The person selling the washer just wanted to upgrade to a new one so we were happy to buy the old enough that clearly still had a lot of life left in it.

Now, I’m sure this article may have been more helpful to you if it had steps to take to somehow get through the mountain of laundry a lot quicker, and to magically have the laundry room stay clean for longer than 7 seconds, but I’m a realist. I’m not sure how to do those things, but I CAN at least give you ideas of how you can save money in the laundry room.

Now, as fun as this has been, I must go do another load of laundry. Again.